Yes Lance, as they had the same dims and were more or less the same boat, all taken from the same builders plans. It was only the two from Gorleston and Lowestoft boats, the Michael stevens and the Louise Stevens that had shallower drafts that would be a little off scale.
This is going to be my last set of postings until after Christmas as I've been banned from going in the workshop tomorrow, Christmas day and Boxing day, so won't be able to find my moulds, masters or fittings that I have done over the past 4 - 5 years until 27th December.
All the work that I have shown you so far has been done in stages over the past few years, because other work has come along that I have had to do for others, including a lot of charity work. As you can see it's not all plain sailing and hands on 8 hours a day, and it is the same with most of those who are one man bands.
Developement of new models takes second place to moulding, casting packaging of fittings , timbers, plastics..taking moulds to the moulders for new mouldings for customers, and a hundred and one other jobs that come first before the new development of forthcoming models, and as such with constant interuptions, the flow of work suffers, and a certain percentage of the time spent in the workshop on a new developement is in the thinking stage of what you were going to do next on your new model.............and then just as you are going to get on with the next part, the next piece of turning to produce that new fitting......someone will ring up with good news.....they want a new kit off you........or someine will ring up telling you your kit is a load of C*** because they haven't followed the instructions and the part won't fit correctly because they have cut it wrongly.............so you have to sort that one out as well, and the thread is again lost.........
It is no bed of roses, and not fun half the time, but the rewards of seeing people who have made a lovely job of one of your kits, sometimes just makes up for it, and that is probably why manufacturers keep on doing it......all they ask for is a little understanding and good will, without the jibes that they get.
So picking up the thread that I left before. I have now put the deck support frames to one side to now concentrate on the running gear.
Most classes of the old double ender motor lifeboats had different rudder set ups to each other class and so most models that are being developed have to have a different set of "fittings" to make them work, and my three models are no exception.
The Mary Stanford has a rudder attatched to an external rudder bar on the stern post, and the two Watson's although similar have different skegs to protect them and are set into the "deadwood" of the rear keel, and as such these skegs have to be built up from a sturdy material once the hulls have been moulded.
Leaveing the mary Stanford till last, I'll deal with the two Watson's first.
First job is to take a template in card of the recess that has been taken out of the rear of the hull ( and as both hulls are exactly the same) the one template will do.
You can see the area vaguely that has been cut out in the first photo.
Once the template has been drawn out on card, but not cut, and the piece doubled up to two templates it can be placed against the plans of the two boats, and the rudder skegs can be drawn onto the card so that it will sit in place into the apperture made when moulding the hull and then transposed onto a singe piece (each) of 6mm birch faced ply.
Also whilst drawing these skegs out, the shapes of the two rudders ( as, on the two different boats, they are both different ) can be traced onto paper and then transposed onto two different thicknesses of ply wood. The rudders are made of three layers of wood for the kit maker which will give then a rudder that once made will not twist on it's own rudder bar once it gets older or knocked from time to time, in a way shown.
The centre core is made from 3mm ply, the same thickness as the diameter of the rudder bar, withan outer skin on both sides of 1.8 mm ply. The rudder bar is set into a channel cut into the centre core with a right angled bend so that it cannot possibly twist once all glued together.
The other pictures show the different rudder skegs and rudders, cut out in ply and not yet glued together with water resistant aliphatic resin. The skeg with the two outer skins is from the Field Marshal and Mrs Smuts, and requered this to give the effect of a trailing edge for the skeg to which securing lines could be passed through hols in the skeg when hauling back up the slip......these are not the "Ruffle" holes, which will be put into the skegs later, but just securing areas for rope ties
All of these pieces are then transfered onto the relevent draughting sheets associated with each particular boat and particular sheet of the same timber thickness to be used for screen printing, after they are dry fit to see that they actually do fit.
Finally the rudder for the mary Stanford can be made.
This is actually a straight forward transfer of a tracing of the rudder from the plans to 4mm birch faced ply, but the fitting is totally different with no less that ten white metal and resin fittings (some of these can be seen in the last photo) being used to make the assembly work......and these fittings all have to be made from masters first, and then set into moulds, and cast before you end up with a product that will make the whole assembly operational, but that's another story.
And that is where I stop until after Christmas........that process will be discussed once I can find my moulds for the stuff shown here and made some time ago.
Author
Topic: 3 Lifeboat builds, What goes into a model kit. (Read 38952 times)